Category: Bike Makeovers

While I was wrestling the Angel of Stupidity, deciding to mount my new fenders on the ‘wrong’ wheels, I did manage to remove the chain tensioner and rig up a “magic gear” that fits the chainstay length. I’m against chain tensioners. I think they’re inelegant and heavy (heavier than having none, at least), and the one I had only seems to work in an ‘outer’ position. It skips if you move the idler wheel inboard.

So I removed a link, and found a gear that works. I had to make sure my chainwheel was centered, though, since it was binding in one spot. I used the Sheldon method to center the ring – it worked perfectly, and was a lot easier than I’d thought. Surprisingly, it was the first time I’d had to do it in 12 years of fixed gear bike tinkering. Vertical dropouts. Go figure. I may go do it to the other 6 derailler-less bikes in my garage, though.

The 36×18 gear I chose (or that chose me) isn’t that useful for flat-land riding OR the super-steep pitches I want to ride. My plan to remove a link and drop 4 cog teeth don’t look like they’ll work. I put the cog on and wrapped the chain, but it comes a couple millimeters short meeting pin-to-pin. It might work when the chain wears more, or I could file flats in the axle, or get a cog FIVE teeth smaller, but I’ll probably just ride it like this for a while. 36×18 is a classic singlespeed gear, and spinning it does move the bike forward…

I am now looking for a 22t cog for a climbing gear, so I can re-dingle-ize the bike, but 22 teeth seems to be the point at which singlespeed cogs go couture and jump 10x in price. ~$3.50 for an 18t cog, to ~$30 for a 22t cog.

I mounted the pink Cascadia fenders I bought. They clear the 53mm (alleged/nominal/putative 60mm) Big Apples nicely, they look baller*, and they’re pink.

To make this work with the minimal clearance of the Utopia (and I saw a new-model Utopia with the same issue: fatter tires will hit the derailleur), I did a stupid thing. I mounted the rear fender on the front, and the front on the rear. I knew it was stupid, but I did it anyway.

Anyway, I took the flat aluminum stock I bought after seeing Tapebubba’s GripKing hack, and made two brackets, one for the end of the rear fender, and one for the front. 1/4″ holes for the bolts to attach them, 3/16″ for the rivets. Rivets are the only way to go for fenders that have clearance issues, and as far as I can tell, ALL fenders have clearance issues. After fixing Angelina’s B72 Brooks saddle, I am in love with rivets. Metal, low-profile, and you get to use things like chisels, nail-sets and BALL-PEEN HAMMERS!

Let me say that again. BALL PEEN HAMMERS.
(I don’t actually own a ball peen hammer)

Here’s what I learned and how I scored:

• Line the brackets up to mark for drilling UNDER the fender holes if that’s how you’ll mount them. Bend a nice curve into the metal, drill the fenders, and mark the metal through the fender holes. Simply measuring doesn’t work, because whatever’s on top will have holes further apart than what’s on the bottom. I actually figured this out before drilling the metal. 10 points to me.
• Drill the holes before making the 90 degree bend for the bracket. It is orders of magnitude easier to hold the metal when it’s flat, rather than trying to hold a dinky piece of angled metal while the drill tries to grab it and snap it around into your fingers. Leverage. I learned this the hard way on the small bracket, and put it into practice on the big one. -10 for the first one, 10 points for learning.
• Slots! All my boltholes were slots instead of holes. Drill a 1/4″ hole and go at it with a rat-tail file, or drill two holes and connect them by filing. Worked perfectly. 10 points.
• Dry fit everything twice before drilling any holes. I ended up slotting the fender for the front bracket to come up through the fender in front of the rivet holes instead of behind them. Totally accurate, dead-on measuring. Fits perfectly. Backwards. The aluminum support goes behind the fork instead of out front, the mudflap is 4″ closer to the ground, and the forward projection is shorter than planned. My points? Negative 10,000.
• If you give yourself some slack, it won’t be that bad. The mudflap picks up leaves riding through a Fall orchard, but the front bag still stays clean. I have a plan to make another bracket that uses the ‘bad’ slot and another slot to not only support the front fender extension, but also mount a dynamo light. Points to me? About 40 (if it works).

I’m happy with the setup. Obviously, my calves are not protected from the spray from the rear wheel. I have a mental image of what needs to happen back there, but it’s bizarre – the fender cutoff from the front needs to be channeled to fit around the seattube, and held in place somehow. Still way better coverage than the seatpost-mount filth prophylactics you see everywhere. The bike and the conditions presuppose a little ‘roughing it,’ so it’s not a dealbreaker for me. I think the rear fender looks very roadsterrific, which was the idea.

* I got this adjective from my brother in law tonight. He says it means “rich enough for a basketball player,” but I think it’s more along the lines of “in like Flynn.” I also got the euphemism “delta bravo,” which stands for d.b., which stands for douche bag. We’ve already moved on to “douche nozzle,” “douche pickle” and “king of the doucheteria” at my house, so “delta bravo” might be a little like suggesting Mrs O’Leary put the lantern out of range of the cow’s hoof. The Titanic has sailed. Sounds cool, though.

I bought some 60mm Big Apples for Jim’s old Gary Fisher Utopia. These things are so fat that when I opened the box, I thought there were two big pythons in it!

These tires make this bike into an ideal Gravel Roadster.* Two speeds, super fat tires, flared drops, rigid fork. It’s pretty light, even though the tires are not. The tires barely fit in the back, solely because of the front derailer cable stop, which I filed down two millimeters for a little extra clearance. You have to look at the gap square on to see that the stop doesn’t actually touch the crown of the tire.

I did see with these tires that the wheel needed a little dishing adjustment – the tires almost rubbed on the right stay, but had lots of room on the left. I gave the left-pulling spokes a half turn tighter, and the right-pulling spokes a half-turn looser, and it seems perfect now. I don’t know if the frame is misaligned, or the wheel was improperly dished, but it doesn’t really matter now, and I can always adjust the wheel later if it’s an issue. These 60mm Big Apples actually measure 53mm on these WTB SpeedDisc rims

“Roadsters” apparently lack of any form of weather protection, but I’d like to make some demi-fenders like Sycip’s Oregon Manifest trike. A full fender in the rear would take a lot of modification: a slot for the seat tube, and possibly a split at the seatstay bridge. I plan to buy a dynamo hub for the front, but not for a while yet.

* Near as a Google search can tell me, I picked up the term “gravel roadster” from someone on the RBW list describing their Rawland rSogn, and “dirt roadster” appears regularly on Coconino Cycles’ blog.